7 Best Dyslexia-Friendly Fonts (And What the Research Says)

There is no single best font for dyslexia. Ask ten dyslexic readers, and you will get a range of answers, and the studies that have tested “dyslexia fonts” back that up.

So this guide does two things: it gives you a shortlist of fonts that are safe, sensible starting points, and it is honest about what the evidence shows, because a font choice alone will not fix reading.

The short version: a clean sans-serif with open, distinct letters is a good default, and how you set the type (size, spacing, alignment, background) usually matters more than which font you pick. Here are the fonts worth knowing, followed by the settings that do the heavy lifting.

What makes a font easier to read with dyslexia

Dyslexia affects how the brain processes written language, and crowded or ambiguous letters make that harder. A few typographic traits genuinely help most readers, and they are the traits to look for in any font, not just the ones marketed for dyslexia.

Sans-serif letterforms. Serifs are the small feet on letters in fonts like Times New Roman. Removing them reduces visual clutter, which is why nearly every readability recommendation starts with a sans-serif.

Open apertures and counters. The gaps inside and around letters like c, e, and a should be wide and clearly open. Cramped openings make letters blur together at a glance.

Distinct, non-mirrored letters. The classic problem letters are b, d, p, and q, plus capital I, lowercase l, and the number 1. Fonts that give each a slightly different shape are easier to tell apart, which is exactly the design goal behind Atkinson Hyperlegible.

Consistent, generous spacing. Space between letters and between words reduces the “crowding” effect that slows dyslexic reading. This is one of the strongest levers you have, and it lives mostly outside the font itself.

Enough weight, and no italics. A regular or slightly heavier weight reads more clearly than a thin one. Italic text was flagged as harder to read in testing, so it is best kept for the rare emphasis, not for body text.

One quality that rarely makes these lists but keeps coming up from readers themselves is familiarity. As one dyslexic reader put it on Reddit, “the easiest to read font is the one you see most often.” A slightly imperfect font a reader knows well can beat a “better” font they have never seen.

The dyslexia-friendly fonts worth knowing

The list runs from standard sans-serifs you already have, to free fonts you can add, to the two built specifically for dyslexia. The standard ones (Arial, Verdana, Calibri) are those recommended in the British Dyslexia Association’s Dyslexia Style Guide 2023. None is a proven fix, so treat each as a sensible starting point rather than a guarantee.

A few of them (Atkinson Hyperlegible, Lexend, Verdana) also sit near the top of WebYes’s own testing of the best accessible, ADA-compliant fonts. That overlap is a good sign: a font that reads clearly for a dyslexic reader tends to read clearly for everyone.

Arial

A clean, ubiquitous sans-serif and one of the standard picks on the British Dyslexia Association’s list. It is free, installed almost everywhere, and familiar, which makes it a safe baseline for body text.

Verdana

Drawn specifically for on-screen reading, with wide spacing and open letters, and it held up well in reading studies. That makes it one of the stronger everyday choices for screens.

Calibri

A clean, widely available default in Microsoft apps. As with any font, pairing it with a larger size and more spacing matters more than the choice itself.

Comic Sans

Yes, seriously. Its letters are irregular and distinct, which some dyslexic readers find genuinely easier, and it appears on the British Dyslexia Association’s own list.

On Reddit, one reader named “Comic Sans and Arial” as their picks. It simply looks too informal for most professional or web contexts, which is the real reason to reach for an alternative.

Lexend

A newer family designed with the goal of improving reading proficiency, free on Google Fonts. It reads cleanly as web and app body text, which is why it comes up often as a modern default.

Atkinson Hyperlegible

Created by the Braille Institute and named after its founder, J. Robert Atkinson. It was designed for low-vision readers, not dyslexia specifically, but its whole purpose is making similar letters look different from each other, and dyslexic readers rate it highly.

One designer on Reddit called it a font they “really appreciate since it is designed with distinct letters for easy reading.” It is free under the SIL Open Font License and available on Google Fonts, which makes it easy to add to any site.

OpenDyslexic

A free, open-source font created by Abbie Gonzalez in 2012, available at opendyslexic.org under the SIL Open Font License. It weights the bottoms of letters on the theory that “bottom-heavy” shapes are harder to flip or rotate, a theory the research does not really support (more on that below).

Dyslexia-friendly fonts at a glance

Font	Type	Free?	Where to get it	Good starting point for
Arial	Standard sans-serif	Yes (system font)	Pre-installed	The “font you already read” default
Verdana	Standard sans-serif	Yes (system font)	Pre-installed	Screen reading, wide spacing
Calibri	Standard sans-serif	Yes (system font)	Pre-installed	Documents and everyday text
Comic Sans	Casual sans-serif	Yes (system font)	Pre-installed	Distinct letters (looks informal)
Lexend	Readability sans-serif	Yes	Google Fonts	Web and app body text
Atkinson Hyperlegible	Legibility sans-serif	Yes	Google Fonts / Braille Institute	Distinguishing similar letters
OpenDyslexic	Purpose-built dyslexia font	Yes	opendyslexic.org	Readers who personally prefer it

None of these is a cure, and the last two are the most debated. The next section explains why.

Do dyslexia-specific fonts actually work?

Here is the honest answer: the controlled research has not found that specialized dyslexia fonts reliably improve reading. It is worth knowing before you invest time switching everything over.

In a 2013 study, Good Fonts for Dyslexia, Luz Rello and Ricardo Baeza-Yates measured reading performance across fonts and recommended Helvetica, Courier, Arial, Verdana, and Computer Modern based on both speed and reader preference. OpenDyslexic did not meaningfully improve reading time or reduce eye fixations, and participants tended to prefer Verdana or Helvetica. The same study flagged italic text as one to avoid.

A 2017 study in the Annals of Dyslexia, The effect of a specialized dyslexia font, OpenDyslexic, on reading rate and accuracy by Robin Wery and Jennifer Diliberto, tested OpenDyslexic against Arial and Times New Roman. It found no improvement in reading rate or accuracy, and none of the participants said they preferred reading in the specialized font.

That does not make these fonts useless. If a specific reader finds OpenDyslexic easier, that preference is real and worth honoring. It does mean you should not expect a font swap alone to deliver a measurable jump in reading for most people, and as one Reddit commenter summarized, “there isn’t much research on dyslexia fonts, but the research there is finds little to no effect.”

The settings that matter more than the font

If the font choice is a small lever, these are the big ones. They come straight from the British Dyslexia Association’s style guide and general readability research, and they help almost every reader, dyslexic or not.

Size. Use a larger body size than the print default. The British Dyslexia Association suggests 12 to 14 point for print, and on the web 16px or larger for body text is a sensible floor.

Line spacing. Increase the space between lines to around 1.5. Generous leading is one of the changes dyslexic readers mention most, with one noting that “larger leading and increased spacing between words helps.”

Line length. Keep lines to roughly 60 to 80 characters. Very long lines make it hard to find the start of the next line.

Alignment. Left-align body text and avoid full justification. Justified text creates uneven “rivers” of white space that pull the eye off track.

Background and color. Pure white backgrounds can cause glare, so an off-white or soft cream background is easier on many readers. Keep color contrast strong but not harsh.

Let readers change it. The most future-proof approach, on the web especially, is to not force one choice on everyone. Reader preferences genuinely conflict, so giving people the ability to adjust font respects that. As one reader advised, “focus on having a legible serif and sans serif font, various text sizes, and ability to change colors.”

This is not a fringe idea, and some well-known sites build it right into the page.

Blue Origin, for example, puts a “Font Preference” control in its website footer that lets any visitor switch the whole site to Atkinson Hyperlegible or OpenDyslexic. It is a small, quiet dropdown, and it happens to offer two of the exact fonts covered in this guide.

How to apply dyslexia-friendly fonts

You do not need special software or a plugin to do this well. On a website, set the body font to a readable sans-serif and pair it with spacing rules.

In CSS, that looks like:

body {
  font-family: "Atkinson Hyperlegible", "Lexend", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif;
  font-size: 1.125rem;   /* ~18px */
  line-height: 1.6;
  letter-spacing: 0.02em;
  max-width: 70ch;        /* keeps lines readable */
  text-align: left;
}

Load the web font from Google Fonts, then keep system fonts like Verdana and Arial in the stack as fallbacks so text stays readable while the font loads. The WCAG text spacing criterion (1.4.12) is a useful benchmark: content should still work when users increase line height and letter, word, and paragraph spacing.

When you are setting readable type on a site, it is easy to fix the font and miss the things a reader actually trips over, like low color contrast or text that breaks when it is enlarged.

How to change a website’s font as a visitor

Everything above is for people publishing text. If you are the reader and a site’s font is hard on your eyes, here is what actually works, checked against how current browsers behave.

If the site offers it, use its own control

A few sites build a font switcher in, like Blue Origin’s footer, and many organizations run an accessibility toolbar such as AccessiYes, usually opened from a floating button or a header or footer link.

These let you change the font and adjust spacing and color for that site, and the change applies instantly. The limit is simple: the control only exists on sites that added it, and you cannot bring it to a site that has not.

A browser extension is the most reliable option for any site

On desktop Chrome, Firefox, or Edge, an extension like Helperbird or a dedicated OpenDyslexic extension can force your chosen font, OpenDyslexic, Atkinson Hyperlegible, Lexend, and others, onto almost every page, along with spacing and color.

Two honest caveats: it cannot reach text that is drawn as an image, including inside Google Docs and PDFs, and the fuller feature sets are usually paid. Extension support on phones is limited, so this is mainly a desktop route.

Reader mode helps on articles, but the font list is short

Safari (the aA menu), Firefox (Reader View), Chrome (Reading mode in the side panel), and Edge (Immersive Reader) strip a page down to its text, then let you pick from a small preset list, not any font you like.

Safari offers around nine set fonts, Firefox only toggles serif, sans-serif, or monospace, and Chrome’s Reading mode lets you change font, size, and spacing but includes no purpose-built dyslexia option.

Note that reader mode only activates on article-style pages, not on homepages, dashboards, or app-like interfaces. So it is a fix for a single article, not a way to change a whole site.

Firefox can override page fonts, with a side effect

In Firefox, Settings then Fonts then Advanced lets you choose a font and untick “Allow pages to choose their own fonts,” which forces your font across most sites. The trade-off is that many sites use icon fonts, and overriding them can turn icons into stray letters, so it is powerful but not always clean.

The practical takeaway

Pick a clean, familiar sans-serif, set it at a comfortable size with generous line spacing, left-align it, and soften the background. That combination helps more readers than any single “dyslexia font” does on its own.

If a particular reader prefers OpenDyslexic or Atkinson Hyperlegible, let them have it, and where you can, give people the controls to adjust type themselves. Readability is rarely about one perfect font, and always about removing the friction around the words.

Frequently asked questions